Descriptive and Revisionary Theories of Events

Abstract

Introduction Early in this century, three Cambridge philosophers, A. N. Whitehead, Ber­ trand Russell and C. D. Broad, became champions of event ontologies that were thought to be compatible with emerging relativity theory.1 Events, therefore, replaced Aristotelian substances as the primary constituents of the universe-they are conceived as units of space-time spreading throughout and overlapping within the electromagnetic field. As modem physics advanced, event ontologies seemed to gain further support from the un-thinglike behavior of elementary particles described in the peculiarities of the quantum world. From the expansion of the universe to the trajectories of subatomic particles, it appears that everything can be systematically interpreted in terms of events. This view involves a radical revision of our common sense conceptual framework, i.e., our ordinary view of the world as composed of enduring material objects existing in space and time, but Whitehead, Russell and Broad were con­ cerned with a new conceptual scheme that is more adequate as a foundation for science. For these philosophers, metaphysics is continuous with science, not prior to, or separate from, science. It is a superscience, but one that must develop from bottom up, so to speak. With the widespread influence of logical positivism in the 1930s, however, philosophy and physics eschewed fundamental ontology. While the philosophers labored to provide a secure logical foundation for the sciences and demonstrate the meaninglessness of all metaphysics, physicists adhered to the instrumentalist inter­ pretation of the mathematical formalism. Cool analysis was in; grand speculation was out. The project of logical positivism eventually wore down, since the positivists themselves failed to formulate precisely the cornerstone of their theory--the principle of verifiability-and it was much to their credit that they acknowledged the difficulty and abandoned the movement. From outside the Vienna circle, there